Long road ahead for Sens

The New York Rangers, winners of four straight, might be the hottest team in the NHL right now.

So the Ottawa Senators, the last team to beat the Rangers in a 5-4 shootout on Oct. 29, can’t afford to look past tonight’s game.

But it will be difficult not to, because after tonight the Senators play six straight games, and nine of their next 10, on the road. Only January, when 10 of 14 games are on the road, is worse for Ottawa.

So the Senators would dearly like to take a win from tonight’s game with them on the road, just for a little confidence. However early, it’s a stretch of games that could make or break a season.

The Senators will start with back-to-back games Friday in Buffalo and Saturday in Toronto, before heading west for games in Calgary (Tuesday), Edmonton (Thursday, Nov. 17) and Vancouver (Sunday, Nov. 20).

“When I looked at the schedule at start of the year, I knew this was going to be a real tough stretch of games that could define how your season goes,” Jason Spezza said. “It’s hard to play over .500 hockey on long road trips like that. To start it off with a win (tonight) would be huge for our team.”

It’s not just the travel. It’s the opposition. Of the nine teams the Senators will face on the road, only the Calgary Flames and the Winnipeg Jets are below them in the standings.

But that’s an advantage that’s nullified with the Flames and Jets having the advantage of being at home.

“If you want to break it down, that’s almost a quarter of our road games this year,” said Chris Phillips.

“It’s a lot of games and it’s not going to be an easy trip. We’re going to be playing some tough teams.

“But you’ve got to play well on the road. You can’t just expect to have a good home record to have a good season.”

Having this long stretch on the road now will invariably mean more home games later in the season, said Phillips. That’ll help for whatever stretch run the team has to make.

While players are familiar with each other a month into the season, a week on the road in close quarters can also only deepen ties.

“The feeling isn’t, ‘Oh, boy, let’s just try to survive this trip,’ ” said Phillips. “There are lots of great things that can come from it.

“Probably one of the biggest is just going out and going through the adversity of being on the road for a little while, and coming home with a good record.

“We’ll have some days in between games for bonding and all that stuff, and I think it does pay off over the course of a season.”

Another advantage, said Spezza, is that because the Senators are a younger team, the attitude is different. It is not the jaded attitude of veterans who have travelled for years and find it nothing but a chore.

“Because it’s a young team, guys haven’t had a lot of long road trips,” he said. “We also have a lot of guys who are single and don’t miss not being home as much as the family guys.

“And we’ll be going through Canada, which we don’t do very often. That always makes it more fun, playing teams we don’t see often.

“So we’re hoping that works to our advantage a little bit.

“I think there will be enough excitement on the trip where we can create some good intensity in the games.”

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